JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Blowing a vuvuzela takes a bit of instruction –- you have to purse your lips together and blow a raspberry into the plastic trumpet.

Robyn Curnow tries out a vuvuzela at Brazil vs. Italy.

The noise that comes out can startle you after your first toot, it sounds like an elephant trumpeting or a foghorn. Soon it become addictive, though, and you have to limit your vuvuzela usage if you don’t want to lose friends, family or your hearing.

I first tried to blow a vuvuzela two weeks ago, at the start of the Confederations Cup which has been held in South Africa ahead of next year’s World Cup. I failed miserably. I blew and I blew and nothing happened, just a few insipid little parps. But at the Brazil vs. Italy game, I got the hang of the vuvuzela and quickly joined the crowd in a jaunty one-note tune. Baaaah! Baaah! Baaah!

It is a sound so irritating and so obnoxious that it’s best to stick with the maxim “if you can’t beat ‘em, join em.” Not blowing a vuvuzela at a South African football game not only makes you feel a bit left out but it also makes you resent the noise everyone else it making.

I can understand why some footballers and fans hate the sound. In stadiums and even watching on television, the constant buzz of the vuvuzelas can be distracting. But with the World Cup one year ahead, everyone just better get used to the inevitable din of the vuvuzelas.

Complaining about the noise they make won’t make a difference –- mostly because no one will be able to hear you above the incessant ringing in their ears.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The bikers on their Harley-Davidsons were the first surprise. They roared down the street on their slick expensive machines to the sound of bellowing exhausts and equally thunderous approval from the crowds of ANC supporters who had gathered in downtown Johannesburg to await the arrival of their hero, Jacob Zuma.

Zuma (center) jumps in the air as he celebrates on stage with supporters.

The next surprise was the skinny transvestite in the miniskirt dancing with a poster in and out among the journalists and waving to the crowd.

They were both symbolic of the diversity and freedom that exists in this country that was once ruled by the deeply conservative, right-wing values of the apartheid regime.

The bikers, in particular, symbolize the paradox of the African National Congress's hold on South African society.

Their arrival was, at the same time, both a celebration and flaunting of wealth in the face of the poor. The wealthy bikers represent the wealthy black elite that supports the ANC.

They have benefited most visibly from the organization's hold on power since the first democratic elections; the poor lining the streets and cheering them, have benefited the least – and yet, such economically different groups of people still feel bound together by a common loyalty to the ANC.

It is a paradox that the opposition parties, even the newest one, a breakaway from the ANC called Congress of the People, or COPE, seem unable to exploit.

Not all the votes are in yet, but it is clear that the ANC is set for a landslide victory.

As their president Jacob Zuma took the stage to roars of approval from his jubilant supporters, as the champagne corks popped, and the fireworks soared into the night air above the skyscrapers of downtown Johannesburg, it was clear that the ANC has lost nothing of the massive electoral power it has held since Nelson Mandela was elected as the first president of a democratic South Africa in 1994.

Still, there is a tiny chink visible in their armor. Roughly one in three South Africans did not vote for the ANC – and they are made up of all races and classes.

The ANC rules supreme, but not without some meaningful resentment left in its wake.

Still, two in every three South Africans did vote for them – and they are the ones celebrating tonight.

Zuma is the pivot of this country's political future. And yet, his broad smiles and celebratory dancing cannot hide the fact that things are not quite as simple as they might look.

His detractors probably fear him too much; while his supporters certainly believe in him too uncritically.

He has won a huge victory tonight. He rules the hearts and minds of most South Africans, but how will he govern them?

Underneath the razzmatazz and champagne, many questions remain about Zuma and how he will lead South Africa.

As one man said to me on the streets of Johannesburg tonight. "The ANC will have to work very hard. Things will not be so easy for them anymore. If they don't succeed, maybe Zuma will be thrown out like Mbeki was."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Standing in the queue waiting to vote, I allowed myself a few moments to reflect on some childhood memories.

Voters queue up in Soweto on Wednesday.

The polling station I am registered at is the primary school I attended in the 1960s and 1970s, and just exactly where I was standing was where, every morning and afternoon, one of the younger relatives of the Shah of Iran would roll up with his driver and bodyguard in a Rolls Royce.

He was a popular kid and I have often wondered what happened to him in the tumultuous decades that have followed since the revolution in Iran.

It was another world then, South Africa at the height of apartheid and the Shah resplendent on his magnificent throne. Both have long since disappeared into history.

Standing there in front of my old school, I thought of how much has changed in South Africa. Back in those days I didn't understand much of politics, but I did know that apartheid was wrong.

I remember watching, as a little boy, about 10 years old, with a mixture of fear and innocent outrage as a van-load of police came onto the school grounds.

They headed for the compound where the black workers who cooked our lunches and tended the grounds lived. They were looking for black people who didn't have the correct "passes" - papers that allowed them to live and work in white areas.

There wasn't much we boys could do, but I remember that some of the older kids jeered at the police as they took away two or three black men whose papers apparently weren't in order.

The brutality of apartheid is still very much alive in the collective mind of South Africa's people, so to stand in a long line of black and white people waiting patiently together to vote remains an emotional experience for most of us.

To watch South Africans vote is to see them at their best. There have been a handful of unpleasant incidents: a hundred or so pre-marked ballot papers were found in Kwa-Zulu Natal; there have been one or two angry protests, and one election official was shot in the leg by an armed robber.

Crime and corruption are big problems in the country today, as is entrenched poverty and joblessness. Many of the elite feel dismay that the country's constitution and the rule of law have been threatened by the long saga of ANC President Jacob Zuma's corruption trial; many of the country's poor, on the other hand, feel rage at how little their circumstances have changed since the ending of apartheid.

However, when we look back at the divisions that apartheid created and the rage that existed at its unfairness, it remains a miracle that South Africans are here today 15 years after the first democratic election in 1994, still voting tolerantly and peacefully, still queuing under the African sun for hours, laughing and joking with one another - and still believing that their vote can make a difference to the country they now share.